Goat Cheese: I can make a nice Chevre, but the aged cheese using pennicillium candidium (white mold) is a real challenge since it requires 14 days sitting in a 50 degree, 90% humidity environment. It's not that the white mold doesn't develop, it's all of those pink and black molds that also join the mix that I can't seem to shake.
A couple of places for cheese supplies:
Leener's
New England Cheesemaking Supply
And general information:
US Goat Handbook Goat Cheese guide
Cheese Making at home
I've had better luck making old fashioned ginger beer. This is very similar to the old style rootbeer (hey, ginger is a root) and is quite tasty if you like ginger. The concept is really quite simple, boil a gallon of water adding in the flavors you like (ginger, lemon, etc..). We have a juicer so I take a big bunch of ginger (hand sized) and juice it, which results in about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of raw juice (mighty strong I might add). Then add a pound of sugar, and when it cools to 70 degrees add a little bit of yeast. Like wine or beer making, the yeast eats the sugars and the byproducts are CO2 and Alcohol. I don't let it ferment long enough to really make much alcohol, mostly to get lots of bubbles rising (less than a day) and then strain it into bottles. I use plastic soda bottles with screwtops, since if they were to blow up it would be less dangerous. Let the bottles sit out for another day (I squeeze the plastic bottle to see how much pressure is building) or until you can't take the pressure anymore, and place them in the fridge. Cooling arrests the fermentation, but if you take a bottle out to drink it and forget about it, it will start again. If you haven't figured it out the CO2 created by the yeast is what makes the pressure and ultimately the nice fizz in the drink.
Some of the recipes I've run across:
Ye Olde Ginger Beer
Old Fashioned Root Beer (this looks interesting)
Ginger & Root beer
Old Fashioned Ginger Beer
Actually this is very similar to how they make champagne. To make champagne you take a basic white wine that's finished fermenting, often it's a less than stellar vintage that's used, and put it into champagne bottles along with a little sugar and a little yeast and seal. The yeast starts up a new fermentation eating the sugar and building up pressure. The good champagnes will ferment for six months to a year. Towards the end they slowly tilt and turn the bottles to gradually cause the collected fines (yeast and other sediment) to collect in the top of the bottle. The next part is fascinating: they do a fast freeze of the neck (liquid hydrogen?), pull out the cork, and remove the little plug of sediment before replacing it with some other wine or alcohol and sealing it back up. A more complete explanation is here.
By the way, the next time you buy champagne check the bottle for "secondary fermentation accomplished outside of bottle" or a similar statement. That typically means they took some short cuts or maybe just used a machine to inject the CO2. The difference is that properly fermented champagne has small delicate bubbles that last forever, the cheaper stuff bubbles like 7-Up and goes flat quickly.
I've also experimented with gourmet cooking. Some of the recipes I found on the recipesource website:
The Recipe Source
Nice Vichyssoise
Eat Dangerously
Cooks Illustrated
Usually I cook like I program, picking a few tips and hints up from books and recipes but creating more based on my current mood and ingredients available. On rare occassions it comes out horribly. ":^)
comment?
permanent link
email this